


Through Space and Time

by blueelvewithwings



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Flashbacks, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Internalised ableism, M/M, Piper!Cisco, Power Swap, Racism (Courtesy of Hartley's Mom), Temporary Power Swap, Vibe!Hartley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueelvewithwings/pseuds/blueelvewithwings
Summary: When Hartley temporarily gets Vibe's powers, he manages to trigger a series of flashbacks of his life on other Earths and in other timelines.Some are happy, some are sad. Some are exciting, some are devastating.And yet, they all seem to have one thing in common...
Relationships: Cisco Ramon/Hartley Rathaway
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29
Collections: Hartmon Fanworks Exchange





	Through Space and Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Purpleyin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purpleyin/gifts).



> This was written for a prompt from purpleyin that I received for the Hartmon Fanworks Exchange: "Cisco and Hartley powerswap and Hartley finds out about what his life was like in other timelines"
> 
> I hope I did your prompt justice, Hans! I had a great time writing it for sure~
> 
> Thanks to the lovely SophiaCatherine for betaing for me <3

It didn’t happen immediately after Melting Point, or at least they didn’t notice immediately. Hartley was feeling a little out of sorts, somehow. There was a buzzing in his head, not quite a headache, but definitely uncomfortable. Cisco, who’d also been hit, complained about a ringing in his ears – but well, they’d both been hit and thrown backwards by the force of the meta’s attack, so it wasn’t really anything to get suspicious about. 

Of course, Melting Point was nowhere to be seen now, as much as Barry, who’d avoided the blast, was zipping around, trying to locate him.

Well, there was nothing to do but to go back to STAR Labs and regroup, then. 

By the time they were back at STAR Labs, Cisco was wincing at every little noise, which was way too often, considering all the whirring computers and other machines in the facility – and Hartley just felt like… he felt like his head was too open, somehow. He couldn’t really explain it.

Things became clearer when Iris asked Cisco if he could vibe where Melting Point was, and Cisco shook his head with a miserable wince. At the same moment, Hartley clearly saw a street in front of him, the meta in question purposely stomping down said street. “Finance district,” he murmured, on instinct, and all eyes turned on him. 

Well, where had that come from?

Two beats of silence later, he and Cisco were staring at one another, but it was Caitlin who spoke first. “Power swap. Okay… that doesn’t make things easier.”

Barry had decided that they stay behind while he went out with Frost and Iris to search for their meta. And while Hartley would have loved to help, he knew he was in no state to do so. Cisco’s ears  were  much too sensitive to render him anything but in pain – and oh, Hartley remembered that, before he’d figured out his implants, how he’d often lain in a corner, sobbing in pain, and the sound of his own sobs had just made it worse and worse and worse until he’d passed out with pain...  And  artley  was  not accustomed to what he could see and know  and it seemed  that he  had lost his ability to walk in a straight line without stumbling,  so staying behind it was for them.

So he ended up doing the only other thing that seemed sensible. He dug up Cisco’s ultra noise-cancelling headphones that he had but never used, and slowly made his way towards Cisco’s lab. As expected, he found him there, curled up in pain with his hands pressed over his ears. Carefully, slowly, Hartley approached him, but his steps seemed to be loud enough to make Cisco look up with bloodshot eyes. Hartley showed him the headphones, and Cisco nodded with a little sob, wincing as soon as the noise escaped him. Hartley approached, and very gently pried Cisco’s hands away from his ears before sliding on the headphones with a gentle smile. He knew better than to speak, but Cisco seemed to relax the moment silence engulfed him. Maybe earmuffs would have been even better, but for now these seemed to do the trick. He would still hear his own blood course through his veins, Hartley knew, and it would still be borderline painful, but at least there was no more whirring, no more ambient noise, no more footsteps.

Cisco gave him a grateful smile, and then pointed at something on his desk. Hartley’s flute – right, he’d been working on that this morning, promising that it would be ready by the afternoon, fixed up with a new, fancy upgrade. One that Hartley could have implemented himself, but Cisco had protested that he was the one who made the toys for Team Flash. It was probably a sign of how far their friendship and their trust had come, once strained and barely there, that Hartley had handed it over with only a token protest in the end. He didn’t let  _anyone_ touch his flute – anyone but Cisco, it seemed.

He tiptoed over to the flute and pointed at it, earning a nod from Cisco. Taking this to mean that it was ready and he could have it back, Hartley reached for it. He wasn’t sure if he could even try it out now, and how long it would be until he could use it again, but he still wanted to know. A little voice in the back of his head told him that he didn’t know if he’d ever use the flute again ever, but he ignored it. This thing would not be forever. He’d be back with his fucked-up ears and supersonic abilities soon, and Cisco would vibe them all throughout the world again. It was just a matter of time.

And then, he touched the flute.

**Earth-1, Erased Timeline**

“ _I know what happened to Ronnie Raymond,” Hartley says, smirking at a wide-eyed Cisco. “But… I’d have to show you.”_

“ _I’m not letting you out of here,” Cisco growls, slamming the button that will close the cover over the cell that Hartley is being kept in._

**Earth-2**

“ _Do you even love me?” Hartley asks, from where he’s sitting in the corner, head back against the wall as he watches Cisco – Reverb – pace._

“ _What kind of question is that, even? Are you suggesting I stay here with you instead of following Zoom’s commands?” Reverb snaps, and Hartley flinches._

**Earth-5**

_They sit on a clearing in the forest, in the green grass, sunlight shining down on them. Cisco puts a hat on Hartley’s head, and both of them laugh before Cisco is being pulled down into a kiss. He takes Hartley’s hand afterwards, kisses the back of it and just holds it._

“ _I don’t burn that easily,” Hartley murmurs, and Cisco chuckles. “You were a lobster last week just from spending lunch break outside, and I’m not letting you get skin cancer that easily.”_

**Earth-9**

_Hartley slowly blinks awake, raising his head to look at Wells, who smiles down at him and easily gives the kiss that Hartley requests with a silent tilting of his face in his direction. As Hartley moves to nudge Cisco, who is snuggled into Wells’ other side, Wells holds him back._

“ _He barely slept all night… nightmares,” he whispers, and Hartley nods. He leans over and places the lightest of kisses on Cisco’s forehead, then pillows his head back on Wells’ chest and closes his eyes again._

**Earth-1, Erased Timeline**

_The elevator opens, and Mr. Ramon steps out. “Hartley, how’s the new update for the accelerator coming along?” he asks._

“ _Good morning, Mr. Ramon,” Hartley replies and hands Mr. Ramon his coffee. “It’s coming along well, I think we can move on to the second stage today.”_

“ _That’s great to hear,” Mr. Ramon supplies, and after they both check left and right to see that no one is looking at them, they share a short peck, then each go their own way._

**Earth-13**

_Hartley is sitting next to a field of wild flowers, gazing out to where a man and a child are slowly coming closer. As the child starts running towards him, he starts grinning and pulls the brakes on his wheelchair. A smart move, as soon the little girl is barreling into him and clambering up into his lap._

“ _Papa! Daddy taught me how to make flower crowns and I made one for you!” she exclaims, safely caught in her father’s arms without a second thought, and bestows upon him the wildflower crown just as Cisco reaches them, a flower crown on his own head and a big smile on his face._

“ _Careful, princess, you lost your own,” he murmurs, and places a smaller wreath of flowers onto the laughing girl’s_ _head_.

**Earth-21**

“ _Lo siento mucho,” the young man babbles, immediately jumping into action and starting to mop up the water from the bucket that Hartley had just toppled over._

“ _These Latinos are so useless, can’t even do a proper job of cleaning,” Hartley’s mother remarks, sniffing at the man. His hands are clenched around the mop he’s holding, and there are cracks in his skin from how dry it is. He’s looking down, clearly avoiding eye contact as a tirade is unleashed on him._

“ _I should fire him, really. Useless pack, all of them,” Hartley’s mother hisses and gingerly steps around the pool of sudsy water. “You better clean this mess up immediately, or you can look for a new job.”_

_Hartley stays behind, gently placing a hand on the man’s shoulder. “No te preocupes, fue mi culpa,” he says, and the man smiles at him and ducks his head._

_Hartley reaches for the second mop and starts wiping up the water._

**Earth-23**

_Lisa has her arms around Cisco as he cries, buried into her shoulder._

“ _I don’t even know why I’m crying… it’s been years,” he sniffles._

“ _Cisco, love. He was your husband for ten years,” Lisa tells him, and the look she gives him is so sweet and gentle._

_The name on the gravestone before them reads ‘Hartley Ramon’._

**Earth-1, Erased Timeline**

“ _Deal or no deal?” the slimy person at the other side of the table asks, and Cisco uncurls his arm from where he’s had Hartley pinned in his lap the entire time. Hartley uncurls and reaches for the flute on the table,_ _right next to the glass of the most expensive whiskey they served here. Free of charge, of course, for Mr. Ramon_ _._

“ _I gave you an answer already, or do you need my pet here to repeat it?” Cisco asks, and the man is gone as quickly as he can._

“ _Thank you, love,” Cisco murmures, and Hartley turns around to allow himself to be kissed._

“ _Anything for you,” he whispers, and cuddles back into Cisco’s chest as if that is the only spot in which he belongs._ _And to him, that’s nothing but the truth._

**Earth-30**

_They are sitting under the open sky, looking up into the stars, leaned into one another, their hands entwined as they watch the stars wander above them, sending their eternal light down as a blessing for the mortals to witness._

_Neither of them speaks._

**Earth-33**

_They stand under a canopy, their hands entangled. Behind them, the officiator proudly pronounces them husband and husband, and Cisco pulls Hartley in to kiss him fervently. Hartley clings to Cisco, and then buries his face in his neck once they break apart, and continues clinging._

“ _I love you, husband of mine,” Cisco whispers, and Hartley makes a choked noise that could be a laugh, could be a sob._

**Earth-37**

_Hartley flinches as the door opens, and Cisco appears, clad in silk pyjamas._

“ _Yes?” he asks, eyes wandering over Hartley’s torn clothes and his ragged backpack._

“ _I’m sorry, Sir, I… usually your butler… I’m sorry, I’ll just go.” He bows a little, and turns to go._

“ _Did you want to ask for some food? Come inside, there’s plenty left from dinner. There’s a guest room too, with a bed, and a shower you can use.”_

_Hartley looks a bit hesitant, but then he shivers in the cold autumn air and steps closer, warily entering the mansion._

_Behind them, the door closes._

**Earth-1, Erased Timeline**

“ _I can’t believe I’m working together with you, Ramon.”_

“ _Not sure if it can be called working together if you snark about and I do the work.”_

“ _Oh, shut up.”_

“ _Make me.”_

“ _Gladly. Come here.” Hartley grabs Cisco’s sleeve and drags him closer, then firmly kisses him._

**Earth-42**

_Cisco is giggling, trying to hide it behind his hands, but it’s still clearly audible._

“ _I kissed him,” he mock-whispers, and Caitlin and Barry roll their eyes before Barry speaks._

“ _Of course you did. Neither of you have paid any attention in history class for like a year because you just make moon eyes at one another.”_

_Cisco claims that this is untrue, but trails off in the middle of the statement as Hartley enters the cafeteria, causing Cisco’s skin to flush darkly before he hides his face in his hands again._

**Earth-49**

“ _Help me build a sandcastle,” Hartley demands, throwing a shovel at Cisco. Cisco throws it back and grabs a bucket instead._

“ _I’ll go collect shells for the sandcastle-tower!” he announces, and then takes off across the beach to the sea._

“ _Shells!” Hartley exclaims and runs after Cisco, shovel and sandcastle long forgotten already._

**Earth-X**

“ _It’s okay… it’s okay, I got you. They can’t find us here,” Hartley whispers, a whimpering Cisco pressed closely to his side, hiding his face in Hartley’s chest._

“ _They can’t find us here,”_ _Hartley_ _reiterates, as outside of the window they are hidden under, the search lights continue their ever-present vigil._

The flute clattered onto the floor as Hartley let go of it, and he found himself caught in Cisco’s arms as his own legs gave out under him and he sank to the floor. Cisco carefully lowered him down and crouched in front of him. Hartley could barely make out the person in front of him through the pounding headache and the flashes of pictures that he’d just seen, but after a few moments, his breathing calmed down enough that he could focus on Cisco’s face in front of him, looking at him with concern.

“Did you vibe things?” Cisco signed, and through the loud pounding in his head, Hartley was so immensely grateful that Cisco learned how to sign for him when he learned that he had days where he just couldn’t bear to speak, or to be spoken to. 

Since his hands were so heavy at his side, not willing to be lifted and formed into shapes and movements, he simply nodded. Cisco frowned, and then took his shoulder, gently guiding him upwards. He was still wearing the headphones, so the signing was likely for his own benefit as well as Hartley’s.

Gently, Cisco’s hand slipped into his own until they were both standing upright again, and he started to guide Hartley towards the door. He didn’t leave the lab, but stepped around to the other side of his long work bench, along its length to the back of the room where – where there was a blanket fort. 

Cisco crouched down and pulled apart the blankets that were used to curtain off the fort, and gestured for Hartley to come inside. His head didn’t quite agree with the movement, but Hartley slowly lowered himself down to his hands and knees and crawled into the fort, only to be joined by Cisco as he looked around, trying to orient himself. It was nicely dark in there, with only a bit of ambient light filtering through the blankets. There as a comfortable mattress, piled high with blankets and pillows. It looked so comfortable….

Cisco carefully coaxed Hartley into lying down, and oh – for the head part of the blanket fort Cisco had built a construction with carefully designed walls, swallowing many of the sounds made by the many machines in the lab. Finding it blissfully quiet for his pounding head, Hartley lay down on the pillow that Cisco had pointed out at him. He frowned when he found that it was  _cool_ , but still burrowed into it. It felt great on his poor, poor head.

Cisco tapped his shoulder, and Hartley turned his head to look at him, seeing Cisco sign that coolness always helped him with his post-vibe headaches. It made Hartley smile, seeing this place of recovery and rest that Cisco had carved out for himself, but it also made him sad, knowing that he had needed to build it all by himself and hide himself away here. He’d never been good with letting other people see him weak, just like Hartley.

That made this all the more precious, somehow. 

Now that they were in the quiet safety of the sound-absorbing walls, Hartley reached out to gently take the headphones off Cisco, then put them to the side as Cisco also lay down, pulling a blanket over them.  _A weighted blanket_ . 

Hartley smiled at Cisco, and for once didn’t protest as his tactile friend snuggled into him. 

“I saw… us,” he signed, holding his hands up over his chest and face so Cisco would be able to see them. 

“Yeah, I sometimes vibe us, too,” Cisco whispered, using his hands to hold on to Hartley rather than to speak. But with the quiet surrounding them, words were safe again… at least Cisco’s whispered words. “We seem very drawn to one another.”

“I saw you with Lisa… and I was dead,” Hartley replied, still not feeling up to using his voice again. Not that Cisco seemed to mind that.

“Lisa? I didn’t know that… but I saw you die on that Earth… multiple times.”

Hartley let his hands hover in the air above him. Did he want to know what Cisco had seen? He decided that for right now, he didn’t. “There was also something where you were… working for my parents?”

“Oh, the household staff from Earth-21? Yeah… that Cisco and Hartley end up kissing in Hartley’s room a lot, I think. I vibed them there...”

Hartley let out a quiet chuckle, quiet enough that he hoped it wouldn’t hurt Cisco’s sensitive ears.

“I was in a wheelchair...and we had a child.”

“Yeah… I once vibed them for an entire night. Their daughter is the cutest princess.” Cisco was smiling as he spoke, his eyes far away. Hartley wondered if he remembered those vibes as if they were his own memories, and what would happen to what he’d vibed after they changed their powers back. 

“I saw us on Earth-X,” he signed, then hesitated for a bit. “Do you know if we… if they make it?”

There was a pause, which already told Hartley everything, and then Cisco shook his head. “They don’t.”

Hartley let his hands drop down onto his chest, only to find one of them encased in both of Cisco’s. 

“They are not us, those people”; he whispered, and Hartley nodded, unable to tell why it still hurt so much, to hear it… to see all these lives that weren’t there anymore. 

“What happened to all of them?” he asked, wrapping his free hand around Cisco’s hands in return. 

“I don’t know… as far as we know there’s only us now,” Cisco murmured, and curled up tighter against Hartley.

“But we… I saw us. _Us_ , us. Before Crisis. We were… a… thing?”

“We were together, yeah,” Cisco answered after he’d been quiet for a moment. “When we got our memories back after Crisis, I knew that. But you didn’t, and I didn’t know what your life was like here, in this timeline, so...”

“So you never pushed,” Hartley finished for him, and watched a blush bloom over Cisco’s skin. Instead of making him look ridiculous, like it would for Hartley’s toothpaste-coloured skin, it made him look sweetly bashful, and weirdly graceful, too. He reached out to run a hand over it, unable to hold back a delighted smile when Cisco didn’t pull back, but simply burrowed deeper into Hartley’s side.

He might need some time to think about that… to know that he and Cisco had been together before, that Cisco remembered it, but Hartley didn’t. That Cisco hadn’t shared it with him. Then again, he was pretty sure that he would not have been susceptible to advances from his favourite fellow scientist right off the bat, when he pranced into STAR Labs and called Cisco a mediocre engineer. He wondered how much that must have hurt Cisco, really. He’d never said anything about it.

“Would you mind giving me another first kiss?” he asked, and then watched as Cisco pushed himself up, looking him over before leaning down and pressing his lips to Hartley.

**Earth-1, Erased Timeline**

“ _I’m scared...”_

“ _I know… I know, so am I. All we can do is pray that Barry and the others will find a solution.”_

“ _I don’t believe in any gods, Ramon.”_

“ _Neither do I, but I believe in our friends.”_

_Hartley and Cisco’s lips meet in a fervent kiss, and they cling to each other as they dissolve into red dust and then nothingness._

Hartley opens his eyes, and finds Cisco looking down on him, his gaze fond and a little worried.

“Another vibe?”

Hartley just nodded, and pulled Cisco down again, to settle him against his side.

“Wanna talk about it?” Cisco asked him, and Hartley just shook his head. Maybe they shouldn’t kiss again until that power swap thing was over with. Though maybe that would mean that Cisco would get those vibes of kisses gone by?

He shook his head at himself and pressed his lips to Cisco’s forehead. When he wasn’t assaulted by memories that weren’t his own, he allowed himself a little smile and pulled the weighted blanket further around them. His finger caught on one of the figures embroidered into it. A large, orange dragon, poised to attack at any moment. A Charizard, he knew. He lifted his head and looked over the blanket, seeing it embroidered over and over with the complete list of Pokemon. Or well, he didn’t know if it was complete, but it started with Bulbasaur – the first one, he knew from hours of listening to Cisco chatter about them – and continued on in the correct order from what little he could tell.

“Where’d you get the blanket?” he asked, wondering how much money Cisco would put into a Pokemon weighted blanket.

What he got in return was a shrug. “You made it for me. Before Crisis. Here, on Earth Prime… no idea. I like to imagine I still got it from you.”

Hartley surely would have known if he’d purchased such a blanket for Cisco – or even made one, though come to think of it, he did like to embroider – but it was a sweet thought, that Cisco still attributed that blanket to him. 

“You should teach me more about these Pokemon,” he whispered, instead of giving a proper reply, running his hands over another of the embroidered little companions.

“Oh, I absolutely will. Netflix and chill with season one of Pokemon and a big bowl of candy, coming right up,” he hummed, and leaned up to kiss Hartley once more.

**Earth-1, Erased Timeline**

“ _I’m glad he can’t hurt you anymore, Hartley,” Cisco mutters, kissing over a scar on Hartley’s chest._

“ _Well, he planted enough of that in my mind that I can continue it myself,” Hartley replies, looking put out with the subject of the conversation. “I’m… I know I’m so self destructive, and I’m not… I’m fucked up, Cisco.”_

“ _And I love you anyway,” Cisco tells him, with a smile on his face that says he means every word of it._

_Hartley blushes, red flushing over his cheeks, ears and neck. “I… yeah, that,” he whispers, and Cisco laughs out loud before leaning up and capturing his lips in a kiss._


End file.
